In my lucid dreams

Since watching Woody Allen's Celebrity I've had a recurring dream about Famke Janssen running out of the apartment with my manuscript and throwing it into the harbour one page at a time. For a writer this scenario solves a lot of problems. Also: Famke.

'Cause you know I'm not so sure

Both ends burning. Up late adding words instead of cutting them - now there's a trick.

I am not a number

A fan as I am of exploitation cinema the buck stops when it exploits writers. Collider has done a good job of covering the I Am Number Four movie but the skinny comes from New York Magazine's piece on James Frey's young adult fiction factory which originated the work. The terms being offered the writers who work on these pieces are odious. Writes one potiential participant:

The Authors Guild got back to me with serious concerns over the contract... I later spoke to Conrad Rippy, a veteran publishing attorney, who explained that the contract given to me wasn't a book-packaging contract; it was "a collaboration agreement without there being any collaboration." He said he had never seen a contract like this in his sixteen years of negotiation. "It's an agreement that says, 'You're going to write for me. I'm going to own it. I may or may not give you credit. If there is more than one book in the series, you are on the hook to write those too, for the exact same terms, but I don't have to use you. In exchange for this, I'm going to pay you 40 percent of some amount you can't verify—there's no audit provision—and after the deduction of a whole bunch of expenses." He described it as a Hollywood-style work-for-hire contract grafted onto the publishing industry—"although Hollywood writers in a work-for-hire contract are usually paid more than $250."

Read the article - it's all in the fine print. I was cautious about criticising Frey for the Million Little Pieces fiasco because it wasn't clear whether he volunteered to lie about the book's veracity or was coerced into doing it - and also, the man's so far away from me in space and income that I couldn't really bring myself to care. But I've revised my opinion: James Frey is a gold-plated prick. If you boycott one movie this year, make it I Am Number Four.

It's a turned back world with a local girl

Season four of Mad Men is over and I'm missing Dr Miller already. The ending made sense because Don stereotypes women not as objects of affection but its source, and his desire to put his family back together is fundamental to his emotional rehabilitation and - I know, I know - if he had stayed with Faye then everything would have been perfect and there would be no story left to tell. But srsly: dude. As a character Faye Miller was the daughter of Vance Packard and Tippi Hedren: all blonde, all brains. If she's gone the series will lose its most mature and alluring paramour since Don shacked up with Midge. I lent my paperback of The Hidden Persuaders to someone in 1999. Now I feel like I've lost the damn thing twice.

Robyn Gallagher has written a really good piece on holiday snaps and memory:

The thing is, I can't remember having this photo taken. I can't remember sitting at a table outside the Sydney Opera House and sullenly looking at a camera to provide evidence of having been there. And I can't remember the view from that table, though, having been there a few times since, I can mentally imagine what that would look like.

And while I'm being melancholy about it, Rumi Nealy posted a diary of NZ Fashion Week pics that make me miss home, or at least the rainy downtown.

Cold fingers

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The Naked Gun

Philip Matthews over at Second Sight likes The American. I did too but there were holes in the story before anyone started shooting. The movie is based on A Very Private Gentlemen, one of Martin Booth's late works. The author describes gunmaking as heavy manual labour, like blacksmithing, and hides his protagonist in an isolated Italian village - which works if Jack is an anonymous craftsman but not if, as in the film, he's a pursued hit man. Being the only American in a village makes you That Guy Everyone Is Looking For; unlike Matt Damon's Bourne, George is too glam to ever be an everyman, Out of Sight notwithstanding. Viewers were told not to worry about this because the movie is an exercise in Style but it did drive me crazy, especially when some of the problems could have been fixed with a few strokes of the pen. Still, The American's heart is in the right place and so is the camera: it's a big, open, chilly movie with more than a few locked-off frames that recall director Anton Corbijn's still work. The setting is new Europe, its generic eateries and phone booths a pleasant contrast to the hills and streams. Cinematographer Martin Ruhe tries to keep things claustrophobic but can't help but be seduced by the open scenery, which is a character all by itself. How nice it is to see mountains in a movie without a fictional battle being waged across them.

George Clooney co-produces with a vision of creating a character different from the type he usually plays, so kudos to him. Silent and staring, his Jack is the anti-George; almost comically so, at moments -- you keep expecting him to crack a joke. Jack is intentionally brooding and solitary but Clooney not talking is a waste of natural resources, like Harrison Ford sitting on his hands -- like the similarly petite Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney is his speaking voice. While the actor's star power frees him to experiment with his performance the production is riddled with the same defensive, let's-underline-this-for-thick-people moments that compromised Up In The Air. I would applaud Rowan Joffe's supermodel-skinny script if the lines that are in it were not so clunky. It's redundant to have someone saying 'Remember last time we spoke?' in reference to a scene which was the last time anyone in the movie said anything.

The movie only gets going in the last few minutes -- or Act as it's signalled -- when Jack dies and George finally comes alive. (If you think that's a spoiler then also be warned that Christmas falls in December.) My favourite sequence, and the most memorable, is the tension-filled exchange of wares in a modern roadside café when Jack meets the person he knows is stalking him. He knows, she knows, we know, but then we don't. Everything is wonderfully quiet, and for a short time The American becomes the terse, godless stand-off it aimed to be - until Joffe's dialogue interrupts, crashing in with a nod and a wink nobody needed. Such a quiet movie: if only it would shut up.